


Something There

by Dragomir



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Could Be Canon, F/M, Medical Device, Medical Trauma, Mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-24
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:35:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragomir/pseuds/Dragomir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something in his side, even if no one believes him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something There

**Author's Note:**

> My first contribution to Danny Matheson week on tumblr. Something of an AU.
> 
> Un-beta'ed, so drop a line if you spot something.

There's something in his side, just under his lung. Danny holds his arm up over his head to study the scar, fingers of his other hand splayed over it, probing for whatever is there. His father won't tell him what's there. He says it's from a surgery from before the Blackout, when he was sick.

Except Danny's never been sick a day in his life. So his father is lying. Danny sees the odd shift in his father's gaze when he asks about the thing in his side. Then father says that he's just imagining things, ruffles his hair, and leaves. Danny goes back to studying the scar in the bedroom mirror in the room he shares with his older sister. Charlie thinks he's going crazy as well.

He knows he's not. There's something under his lung, a hard object pressing against the muscle and bone. Danny scratches at the scar when he worries now, because that's usually the cause of his distress. He chews his nails down to the nubs when Maggie asks why his side is always covered in bloody scratches. (He tells her it must have been poison ivy or a bug bite. She doesn't believe him, but pretends to anyways.)

Eventually, he gets better at pretending he's forgotten about the thing in his side. Danny thinks that, if he ignores it long enough, it'll just go away and not be there anymore. It doesn't go away. He makes himself stop thinking about it for three months before he goes back to scratching at the old scar. The bloody scratches come back, and he starts chewing his nails down again so he doesn't hurt himself. No one but Maggie seems to notice anything wrong anymore. Maggie gives him a list of possible surgeries it might have been.

He hasn't had any of them. Father can't remember—so he says—what the surgery was for. Danny knows he's lying. Somehow, he finds it hard to believe that anyone would forget something that left their child with a two and half inch scar on their side, just under their lung. Or that something was left behind. Maggie says she can't find anything, but she makes him drink the awful antibiotic tea she brews for serious illnesses anyways.

Danny smiles for the first time in months when, listening at father and Maggie's bedroom door one evening, he hears Maggie suggesting that maybe the doctor forgot a tool in his side. It's happened before. Danny hopes that's just what it is. He pretends he doesn't hear father's noncommittal grunt after Maggie voices her theory. Because he wants to have an _answer_.

Charlie laughs at him when he voices Maggie's theory to her. She calls him stupid and whacks him with a pillow when he won't go to sleep. But he can't, because he's scratching at the surgery scar and thinking about lost surgical tools.

When everyone else in the house is asleep, Danny creeps down to the kitchen to light a lamp. He grabs Charlie's skinning knife and takes the knife and the lamp to the bathroom. His arm goes over his head, and he digs the knife into the top of the scar and presses it in until it stops.

There's so much blood.

And then he reaches into the cut and finds the object. His fingers are slick with rich, warm, red blood now, and it almost slips from his grip a few times. Danny's hand shakes as he holds the small capsule up. There's a tiny blinking light in it. He should notice the blood soaking his side and making the floor slick, but he's oddly fascinated by the object in his hand. He's…

He's never seen anything like it.

Charlie's screaming draws him out of his reverie.

Danny holds the blinking object up with bloodstaind fingers and smiles.

"Tol' you something was there," he slurs.

**Author's Note:**

> So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Think Ben should have ponied up quicker? Drop a line and let me know.


End file.
